Fallen Leaves and Broken Windows
by NorthernTrash-x
Summary: Bakura/Malik. Dedicated to mystralwind. Because sometimes you have to think of answers to questions you don't understand yourself.


Dedicated to mystralwind, for her review that made my day. Thank you!

(Malik being the 'good' side, and Bakura being Ryou's yami.)

Malik x Bakura

**Fallen Leaves and Broken Windows**

_"I'm no stranger to the street  
__I've got my label, so I won't crumble at your feet  
__and I know baby, so I've got scars upon my cheek,  
__and I'm half crazy- come on, and love me baby  
__so, you find me hard to handle? Well, I'm easier to hold;  
__so I might steal your diamonds, I'll bring you back some gold.  
__no, I'm no angel; I'm no stranger to the dark  
__let me rock your cradle, let me start a fire with your spark  
__let me drive you crazy- come on, and love me baby"  
_- Allman Brothers Band

He stood, the road and the buildings on either side of it framing him in the dusk. A strong autumnal wind blew, rolling the litter and dead leaves along the gutters, still fortunately dry from a so far arid autumn. The watcher took a step forward uneasily, making one such leaf crack underfoot, causing him to wince at the unexpected noise. The watched shook his head a little in warning, and the other took his foot backwards again. The observed's hair blew behind him, long strands twisting around, sticking a little to the fabric of his coat, which flapped along in tune. His legs were unnaturally thin for his height, and parted as he stood in a defiant stance, and although the watcher could not see his arms, he could tell they were crossed in front of him, tight against his chest.

The sun was setting beside the top of the street, and he remained motionless, a black silhouette countering to the darkening colours of the sky, a contrast, an obvious shape that stood out against the living, moving colours of the evening sky. The colour of his hair you could not tell from here, so tainted by the light from the sun it came out as unkempt waves of gold and red and scorched orange, a living mass of matted knots.

The watcher cleared his throat, his eyes never leaving the others back, waiting for him to speak. When, eventually, the observed did, it was in his usual voice, betraying no emotion.

"Why?"

"It wasn't intentional, I can assure you."

"Irrelevant. Why?"

"It doesn't need examining. Why did you not give me an answer?"

"That doesn't need examining either."

The watcher laughed, hoarsely and not with much humour.

"You still could have given me a reply, rather than walk out and not come back for three days."

"I'm my own person."

"Ryou is worried."

"Ryou worries about everything. You, me, Marik, the Pharaoh. It's in his fucking DNA to care."

"Don't act like you don't care about him."

"I don't care about anyone."

"Hmm. I got that, at least."

The watcher took another step forward, ignoring the discomforting sound of cracking leaves, and sighed heavily as he approached the figure. He stopped as he levelled with him, standing by his side, as if he too were only watching the view of the sun setting over the skyline. It was very low now, the oranges faded to dusky pinks over-toned with dark blues, and the light slowly faded to twilight as they stood there in silence. The watcher glanced over in the dim grey light, only to find that he now was being observed with dark, unreadable eyes that bored into him, the intensity almost tangible in the dying day.

Now, in the faded glow, he could make out the colour of his hair, no longer a mine of gold and coppers but a mismatch of silver and white.

Malik sighed, tired of the game.

"Am I ever going to get an answer?"

Bakura looked abruptly away.

"What do you expect me to say?"

There was no answer, and Bakura didn't expect one either. His watcher looked away, back at the source of the fading light, his shoulders slumped. Bakura resisted the urge to rub his face in frustration- instead, he continued staring.

He didn't know what to say.

He didn't _understand_.

How had it happened? He was a cruel, unspeakable criminal, a tormented soul, only still allowed existence because the Pharaoh had allowed it in a typical act of charitable consideration. Malik, on the other hand, was reformed, a better person than the one at Battle City. Bakura, however, was a thief, a liar, a cheat. A bastard, who was more likely to cut you up and take your valuables than he was to offer companionship, yet something tugged towards the blonde next to him, something in his hips and his chest. Something happened when they were close, something that made his breathing a little too difficult if he didn't watch it, something that made him irritable because he didn't have a name for it and couldn't fully understand it.

There was something in his eyes. There were a mismatch, not blue and not red, a violet in the middle that changed day to day from dark to light without any conscious reason. They were there when he turned around, always watching him, confusing him, and he thought he saw them in other people, becoming disappointed when he realised that they weren't and that the person was not Malik.

He saw them in his nightmares, but he saw them in his dreams too.

It was something to do with how he acted, how he wore those shirts cut at the midriff because he just wanted to, and how that hadn't changed, even after he went back to the 'better' side. It was how he still had a wary cockiness about him, how he would rev his bike engine and throw back his head in laughter as the sound of it caused the neighbours to yell from their windows. It was the banter he would automatically start with anyone, the way he had something so very alive about him that Bakura just wanted to take and make his own, even though it wasn't for him, like the first man who stole fire from the Gods.

"How did it happen?"

"I don't know. I didn't mean it to. It just did."

There was another long pause.

"You can't blame me for it, Bakura. And you can't lie to me, either. I know I wasn't reading things the wrong way. You care too, you just don't know how to show it yet. And I couldn't tell you how I know that, I just do."

Bakura spoke again, his voice almost a whisper.

"Why?"

Now, it was Malik's turn to not know how to reply, still didn't understand how the other just didn't _get_ that sometimes there wasn't so much a reason, as a perception.

Why indeed? He was not the most desirable creature around, by any stretch of the imagination. If rumour held true he was a crazed, egotistical sadist with a penchant for fucking people over whom he didn't like. He was wounded, from his past and his failures and the people he'd seen die and killed himself, and he pretended he didn't care about it. He was a cruel, anti-social bastard, no one couldn't agree with that assessment.

And yet, there was something about the way his eyes would fasten on to his own that would make him feel like he was drowning in some deep and pleasurable pool, something about his long, pale fingers, constantly in motion, that made Marik want to hold his fists and kiss the knuckles more tenderly than he'd ever done anything before.

"Because you're difficult."

It was said with a smile, still staring into the far distance, and Bakura turned to him incredulously.

"Difficult?"

"Yes. If you really want to know it is because you are flawed and selfish, and especially because you're scarred, and you will never admit it. Because you'll always be stealing, but I think if you ever found anyone who understood you and cared enough to see past it all, then you'd give it all to them. It's because I don't know how to act around you at all so I just act like myself and you don't act any more of a bastard than you do to Ryou, which I think means you don't hate me."

There was another long pause, and then Malik spoke again.

"It's because you've seen the darkness, like I have, and you don't know how to deal with it, either."

"I see."

"You have your explanation now."

Malik slumped to the ground, balancing on his feet and hugging his knees, staring hard at the ground. The leaves scattered from the trees that lined the road were red and brown, warm colours that reminded him of home far more than the green ones on the trees did, before they fell. He wondered if that was somehow symbolic, that the ones that made him think of home were the dead ones that had been discarded on the ground. He watched a particular one, a deep scarlet but laced along the lines of its skeleton it was still yellow, giving it a strange look of partial artificiality. He watched its progress along the ground, apparently enraptured.

Bakura simply watched him.

They stayed like that a while longer, until Malik began to shiver. He'd run out so quickly he'd left his coat he was in that much of a panic. He had been avoiding Bakura since he'd had that conversation with him, the yelled words into a dead-pan face, followed by a slammed door and an unbroken silence. He hadn't known that Bakura had been gone for three days until he'd come around that day at Ryou's request, only to be greeted with the news. He'd run out almost immediately, promising the tired, worried boy that he'd find him. He'd toured the city on his bike all day, and now he actually had found him, he didn't know what to do.

He stood again, still shivering, and noticed that Bakura certainly didn't look like he'd slept that much, or even at all.

"Where have you been?"

"Here, for the main."

"For three days?"

He gestured towards the once profitable, now abandoned warehouses that lined the road, shrugging and not bothering to explain how he'd spent hours sitting in various musty, quiet rooms with spider webs and inquisitive mice, thoughts eating away at his mind.

"Malik?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you cold?"

"A little. Why?"

"You look it, that's all. You might as well head back."

"I'm not going anywhere without you."

Bakura ignored him, setting off towards the warehouse, pushing past the blonde. Malik looked after him, an expression somewhere between anguish and anger on his face, and jogged back down the road to pick up his bike.

He wheeled it through the broken down gates and followed Bakura's path around the side of the building to the back of it. He saw where Bakura entered, through a broken down janitorial door, and chained his bike to a post, pulling the tarpaulin out of the box at the back and securing it tightly around the body of the bike. Giving it one last check, delaying time, he followed Bakura into the building.

In there, it was obvious where the other had gone from the footprints in the thick dust. They lead across a room, lined with fallen leaves that had rolled in through the door and smashed windows, and up two flights of stairs. There was a door at the top that once was secured with a large padlock- it lay, now defunct, on the floor, a testament to Bakura's lock-picking skills that had not dissipated through time. Malik pushed the door open warily, exposing to him the loft space.

Due to the height of the floor and the padlock, this room was dry and relatively intact, although cold, with very few broken windows and leaves. It had, at one point, obviously held an office and waiting room, because there was a desk with a splintered leg and a broken sofa pushed into the corners. There was a rustle in the eaves of some kind of bird at one end, and Bakura, seeing him enter and cock his head to listen, spoke.

"They're owls. They stay away from people. I thought you were going."

Malik rubbed his face in exasperation.

"I'm not going until I can take you with me."

Bakura had stripped the sofa of the six large base and back cushions on its frame and had arranged them between the wall and desk, making a strange kind of couch on the floor. He was sat on it already, against the wall, and Malik, although uninvited, sat next to him, not touching.

The make-shift sofa faced one of the few broken windows, and the glow from the moonlight had become more evident as it had gotten darker, shining across the floor onto them.

"You should have gone home."

"I didn't."

"You'll freeze."

"Perhaps."

A pause, and a sigh.

"You shouldn't be so stubborn."

"I know, but you can't talk."

Bakura's hand gripped Malik's arm suddenly, then retreated.

"You're too cold."

"I'll be fine."

"No, you wont."

He pulled off his long coat and threw it over the both of them, tucking his legs up and pulling it down to it covered his shoulders. Malik had to move closer for it to fully cover him, and now their shoulders were touching, a glance under fabric of rapidly cooling flesh.

Malik found himself staring at Bakura again from this new, much closer, vantage point. His eyes were closed and his skin looked too pale in the moonlight, making him look unhealthy, a deathly pallor. His body looked emaciated as his arms wrapped around himself, his blue veins obvious though his wrists, his cheekbones looking deeper due to the shadows that the night-time light cast. His lips were faintly blue, and Malik fought the urge to warm them himself. They were close, a few centimetres between their faces the only gap left as he moved slightly nearer.

Without warning, Bakura's eyes snapped open, staring directly into Malik's. They stared at each other in a heated silence, tension almost tangible in the air. Neither broke contact as Malik's breath caught in his throat. Bakura found his heartbeat was going far too quickly, and he willed it to slow back down as Malik leant slightly closer, their noses almost brushing. Malik swallowed as he felt Bakura's breath ghost across his face, and he leant down in a quick, sudden motion, pressing his lips against Bakura's.

Their eyes were open just a moment longer, still looking into each others before Bakura's flickered closed and Malik let his fall too as he slid his arms around Bakura's waist, surprised to feel that Bakura was wrapping his around the back of his head, pulling him into a deeper kiss. They slid slowly down from their sitting positions until they were lying across the cushions on the floor, legs intertwined, Malik leaning over Bakura, who was feeling rapidly more and more out of control and out of composure. He was not sure what had just happened, but all he knew was the strange feelings in his chest all of a sudden felt so much better, so good it was undeniable, so perfect it had to be untrue, and probably was.

Their cold bodies pressed against each other until they became warm again, and then hot, and then too hot, and afterward Malik pressed his forehead against Bakura's and asked him a question.

"Does this mean I get an answer now?"

Bakura smiled lazily.

"Surely that was your answer?"

He kissed Malik, the blonde's weight on top of him, legs twisted together. He should have felt trapped, the weight oppressive, but instead he felt strangely liberated, inexplicably free.

The moonlight still shone through the broken window pane, but it didn't irritate either of them as they eventually fell asleep, just shone off the dew on the fallen leaves on the ground outside, oblivious to the dusty, dirty loft space in the old warehouse and the pair that slept on within it, some questions answered and a thousand more possibilities open.


End file.
